ShopVisible Launches Mobile ecommerce Solution

ShopVisible Mobile Creates Unique ecommerce Experience on iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Windows Mobile Devices 

ATLANTA – June 22, 2010 – ShopVisible, a leading provider of on-demand ecommerce solutions, today announced the availability of ShopVisible Mobile, an ecommerce platform that extends its comprehensive tools and services to the mobile environment, creating a rich mobile retail experience for consumers. ShopVisible Mobile runs on all major mobile devices, including iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Windows Mobile devices and was designed with the specific requirements of the mobile environment in mind.

“We have seen more and more consumers using mobile devices for purchases and buying decisions,” said Puneet Mehta, co-founder of Foothealth.com. “In order to stay competitive in the marketplace, we knew that we needed to offer a robust mobile retail site on par with our online storefront. Partnering with ShopVisible, the transition to mobile has been seamless. Our customers can now easily and quickly enjoy the same rich experience on their mobile phones as they do from their home computers.”

Today, more and more consumers are making their buying and purchasing decisions via the mobile platform. While purchasing made via mobile devices is still in its infancy, a significant number of consumers research their purchases in real time via a mobile device, making it imperative for retailers to create an optimum mobile experience. ShopVisible Mobile puts the user experience first. Its mobile ecommerce platform enables faster load times by creating “lighter versions” of ShopVisible client sites specifically optimized for a mobile browsing and shopping experience. Its simple interface makes it easy for users to browse retailers’ products and even make simple, fast purchases via services like PayPal or Amazon right from their mobile phone.

“Mobile devices get smarter all the time; today, these devices aren’t just capable of voice and messaging, but allow consumers to view streaming video and make online purchases. Retailers are realizing that mcommerce is a new and growing way to drive customer interaction and increase revenue. This opens up real opportunities for retailers to reach consumers through a medium they are familiar with and using on a daily basis,” said Sean Cook, CEO of ShopVisible. “The creation of ShopVisible Mobile is a natural of extension of what we already do – allow retailers to focus on growing their businesses through a multi-channel approach to ecommerce.”

ShopVisible makes it easy for retailers to extend their online business to the mobile environment by enabling them to manage their websites, online channels and mobile sites all from one platform. Retailers do not need to spend cycles setting up separate environments for their online and mobile presences; the ShopVisible Mobile solution recognizes when a consumer is accessing the retailer’s site from a mobile device and automatically makes adjustments to customize the site and viewing experience.

Major features of ShopVisible Mobile include:

• Easy integration with Amazon Mobile Payments and Mobile PayPal
• In-site search functionality and mobile search friendly infrastructure
• Highly SEO-friendly for mobile search
• Consumers can buy products directly from the device or push a button to order by phone
• Retailers can control and change content
• Eliminates the need for extra integrations, tying all orders and traffic directly into the same site management tools and business processes already in place
• Comprehensive and simple traffic and order analytics

• Easy-to-deploy promotion codes
• Live shipping calculations against UPS, Fedex and USPS

ShopVisible Mobile is available today. For more information, please visit http://www.shopvisible.com/mobile-commerce.aspx.

About ShopVisible

ShopVisible is an on-demand ecommerce solution provider that delivers tools and services designed to streamline and advance retailers’ online businesses.  From initial design or re-design to multi-channel strategies, proven search engine optimization implementation, content management, CRM, shipping, back office systems and analytics, ShopVisible provides unified management of the entire e-tail ecosystem, providing the flexibility and insight to meet even the most complex business needs.  ShopVisible powers some of e-tail’s most successful brands, ensuring speed to market, security and constant innovation. For more information, visit www.shopvisible.com, or call (866) 493-7037.

ShopVisible attends a re-platforming seminar conducted by Eli Katz, President of Ashford.com at the 2010 Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition and shares a few thoughts on how the ShopVisible e-commerce platform stands up to some of the biggest challenges retailers face in re-platforming their business.

The discussion centered on some of the critical issues retailers should consider when going through a re-platforming for their ecommerce business. Mr. Katz has launched a beautiful new and robust site for Ashford.com, but pointed out some cautionary tales of common issues the businesses face. When your site requires five (or more) different systems that require additional resources, time and money to do what one system should do seamlessly, re-platforming may be the right solution. But be careful that the new system does not end up requiring five new ones, and many new resources in the process.

Also, speed is crucial to the success any re-platforming process because time is money. Have you noticed how all the additional customizations push back your site launch weeks sometimes months longer than anticipated?

When Ashford.com made their switch from their original open source platform provider, they expected the aforementioned inefficiencies would be resolved with their re-launched platform powered by their new enterprise solution. However, with even the best of plans and intentions, there can be forks in the road and an aggressive 6 month launch plan can take 4 times that time. Mr, Katz mentioned a few specific common stumbling blocks that etailers should watch out for…

• Often, the catalog and data structure more complex than anticipated
• More third party tools needed to be implemented than originally planned that may introduce more time, complexity and risks than anticipated
• Projects can frequently run over budget and behind schedule
• Migrations can leave small, but important details overlooked potentially breaking tracking, disrupting existing business processes, and losing marketing traction in search

ShopVisible’s re-platforming process is efficient, in most cases requiring one-third of the time to market compared to our competitors. Because we build and implement our own sites for our clients, there is great attention to detail of how the site, the business, and the underlying technology synchronizes. To ensure seamless and non-disruptive migration ShopVisible’s platform utilizes automatic 301 redirects to preserve search rankings and existing traffic sources and our suite of platform migration tools to ensure smooth launches. While we understand that re-platforming can be scary business, don’t get trapped into a lengthy process that is more complex than what you started with. Just ask AbsoluteBarStools.com, whose site we launched in 45 days!

Please join us at the Internet Retailer 2010 Conference & Exhibition held at McCormick Place West in Chicago from June 8-11. 

Now in its sixth year, IRCE 2010 is the world's largest ecommerce conference, each year drawing more than 5,000 attendees. This year's show features 175 e-retailing experts on its speaker faculty, 91 conference sessions on all e-retailing topics, and five targeted workshops. It also features the largest exhibition of ecommerce solutions in the world—400 exhibitors in all, including the ShopVisible booth. Please visit us at Booth 685 so that we can show you what we can do to improve your online retail performance.

At the show, look out for ShopVisible client Susan Aplin, CEO of bambeco.com.  Susan will be speaking on Social Media: Closing the Loop – How Going Social Leads to Sales during the general conference session on June 10 at 11:45 AM.

We hope to see you at IRCE 2010!

  Calling all retailers: Get 50 percent off the two day main conference at Etail West 2010 courtesy of ShopVisible ecommerce solution.

Download the brochure and register online here.

Etail West provides you with high-level, tactical presentations and panel discussions and creates a platform for you to swap ideas and network. Attend intimate and interactive sessions, built upon the relationship-building between retailers that you can’t receive at huge tradeshows.

At the show, stop by the ShopVisible booth where we will be holding a special clinic entitled:

Visibility = Sales

Visibility in search, channels and comparison-shopping engines

Visibility into your business – orders, shipping, inventory and more!

Visibility everywhere

If you sign up to attend Etail, feel free to contact us at info@shopvisible.com or 866-493-7037 to set up a time for a one-on-one website consultation session with our ecommerce experts at the show.  We will prepare an exclusive document for you in advance of the event to take with you free of charge that includes tips on how you can improve your visibility and website performance.

Etail West 2010

February 22-25 (Main conference: February 23-24)

JW Marriott Desert Springs

Palm Desert, CA

1. connecting with customers
2. going mobile
3. becoming expert sources for online retail
4. making navigation more useful
5. personalizing the online experience for shoppers
6. making tough purchases easy
7. selling themselves
8. creating a sense of online urgency
9. connecting the site and the store
10. playing the value card

As the ShopVisible Ecommerce Security team has been undergoing its PCI level one assessment we have become quite familiar with the late David Taylor via his prodigiously informative PCI Knowledge Base. The Payment Card Industry and the online security community in general lost a true scholar recently with the unexpected passing of fifty seven year old David Taylor, formerly of Protegrity and Gartner.

Those familiar with online Ecommerce security and PCI compliance have likely read posts from Taylor and heard him warmly and simplistically address the often misunderstood and esoteric realm of online security in his webinars. For online security laymen, Taylor provided a perspective that was grounded in data security standards and payment protection. Companies without large IT infrastructures and the human resources to undertake such projects as PCI compliance looked to Taylor for instruction on proceeding with security compliance and for definition of technical elements like File Integrity Monitoring, Application Firewalls and Penetration Tests.

David Taylor was indeed an expert in a field incomprehensible to many. In of his most recent posts from the PCI Knowledge Base, Taylor delved deep into Ecommerce security and organizational management as he addressed how PCI compliance can coalesce with risk management policy to better protect Ecommerce firms. His erudite approach to safeguarding online business was transparent and honest and will be well received for years in the fields of security compliance and online fraud prevention.

PCI standards evolve but they do so often at a more languid pace than does the technology itself. Toss in economic considerations and you've got a real Ecommerce conundrum...

Recent literature published in the PCI Knowledge-base examines security and compliance migrations, cost reductions, and virtualization in recessionary times. Ecommerce solution provider ShopVisible offers up insights into its own PCI assessment process while trying to stay on top of recent Ecommerce security news in order to provide its clients and readers a glimpse into the rapidly blossoming arena of Ecommerce payment protection.

For many online merchants, or at least those wrestling with PCI and security measures to protect the CDE or cardholder data environment, the strident 12 requirements of PCI coupled with serious security budgets and IT infrastructure has created headaches and handicapped wallets...especially now. For many, as evidenced in the PCI Knowledge-base's expert’s blog, the arduous compliance process has become tarnished by a "checklist mentality and ineffective implementation and enforcement." It can be argued as a best practice in Ecommerce, or at least in an effort to pass compliance levels, that reducing risk and documenting to assessors that effective controls are in place exudes risk management policy, and thereby can help cut costs during the implementation.

PCI security experts have been discussing sophisticated elements of online commerce and their relation to development of both policy and technology. For instance, with regards to network segmentation and scope, the PCI Knowledge-base notes that “network segmentation is still not a requirement, for some reason, but it’s the single action that will save you the most money in the assessment.” In the PCI 1.2 version, segmentation is discussed and noted as being adequate along with the appropriate network diagrams if in place. One solution available to many merchants with the right budget is a variation of a network monitoring tool. These can “tell you, continuously, of attempts to access specific network resources.” They can in doing so show the assessor the positive impact of your network segmentation policy and thereby quantify risk and help cut back on PCI compliance costs.

Store sampling is another facet of the compliance process and in PCI 1.2, “the goal of the sampling process is to understand the risks posed by stores, since many security breaches originate there…” one here must show the assessor that store policy is commensurate with Ecommerce provider policy and high levels of consistency are maintained constantly again helping to reduce risk and cut costs. Again, automated tools can benefit providers here in an attempt to cut time and costs resources associated with manual configuration management. The PCI Knowledge-base notes that “the ability to place server configuration under change control is valuable for both PCI requirement 2, as well as requirement 10.” Automated tools will often justify a smaller sample size thus again reducing assessment fees.

The latest post from the PCI Knowledge-base also delves into discussion of compensating controls in the Ecommerce eco-system and states that “while compensating controls are too often used as a PCI cost cutting technique by merchants, they are really the heart and soul of risk management relative to PCI…a weak process for documenting and quantifying risk usually shows up in poorly defined compensating controls, which can cause compliance failure and additional assessment and technology costs.”

Basically, PCI compliance is an arduous process for any company regardless of organizational complexity, IT infrastructure and budget size. Above are just a few methods to try and cut back costs. When selecting an Ecommerce provider, it helps to do your due diligence and “in PCI 1.2, there is specific mention of the need to prove due diligence as to risk ‘prior to engaging’ service provider, and need to prove ongoing ‘monitoring’ of compliance status.” Keep monitoring policies up to date and maintain a vigilant stance with regards to data centers. Just because you’re PCI compliant does not mean that a hardened data center will mandate policy to keep you compliant. Prove to your data center, your assessor and to your clients that you care about risk. Show them PCI is an ongoing process and one dedicated to secure online transactions. The more safely your merchants sell, the more they will appreciate all your hard work!

ShopVisible is an Ecommerce solution provider intent on security, integration and SEO.